# What happens when the robots (peacefully) take over? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 9, 2012, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914 "2012-01-09T11:43:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2013, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/101 "2013-01-25T16:36:02Z")
> [@CutterJohn](#): > > I don’t think so. > > The population stabilizes because a child is a huge burden. Gotta take care of the kid, feed it, cloth it, pay for its school, take time off work when its sick, etc. Its not like when we were on a farm, and that kid was essentially a slave laborer, working without pay. > > Kids are a net liability today rather than a bonus. > Now when we’re all on the dole because of the robot revolution, the kids are neither a benefit nor a liability, so I’d expect that the average number of births would go up. Have you even met a child? I mean, I love my children and all, but what a demonstration of marginal utility. I wouldn’t sell one of my two kids for a million dollars, but I wouldn’t give you a nickel for another one. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/102 "2013-07-11T13:28:21Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > If automation were a significant problem, why has unemployment continued to bounce around the [5% mark](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html) for the last century despite huge industrialization of engineering? I’m not sure past results are a good predictor of future performance, here. Have you seen [this graph](http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/rise-of-the-robots/)? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/103 "2013-07-11T13:47:28Z")
I found this comment on a [blog post](http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2013/01/18/paul-krugman-is-wrong-about-the-rise-of-the-robots/) and thought it was very insightful: > [@](#): > > We’re already heading towards a far greater proportion of the population in rich countries living off of state-supported pensions, as part of the aging of our population. Assuming that the Demographic Transition hitting Mexico and the rest of Latin American continues, then in 30-40 years time we could have a far smaller segment of the population actually working, since far more people will be old and retired (and I don’t think the political support will be there to drastically cut Social Security, for example). > That would be an odd economy. You’d have some highly productive, possibly low-employment sectors that heavily utilize automation and other machinery. They would generate some knock-on employment from people selling services to the remaining workers for those companies, but more importantly they’d serve as an important source of tax revenue to fuel Social Security. That large body of old people would then be a source of demand and employment for health care-related services, and those people would in term generate additional employment from the services and goods they use, and so forth. As I stated in my reply, it may be that the looming mass of Boomers receiving old-age entitlements will save us economically rather than doom us as is so often stated or implied. Maybe what will end up happening is that instead of raising the retirement age, it will slowly be lowered! ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/104 "2013-07-11T15:25:03Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > One misconception that people have is that automating a job has the net effect of decreasing available jobs by 1. > > In fact, employment is basically unlimited. As long as anyone’s life is not perfect, there is a job for a human to do. Automating a process makes us more efficient at that process and frees human labour to do one of the jobs that machines can’t currently do. > > The reason that there are any unemployed is due to a number of factors such as people not being trained in areas that the economy needs, market failures in matching people to roles, and a proportion of the population being unemployable due to general or mental health issues (and yes other factors, but I think those are the main 3). > > If automation were a significant problem, why has unemployment continued to bounce around the [5% mark](http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0104719.html) for the last century despite huge industrialization of engineering? > > Finally, just to finish out the rant, the scenario of a few rich people making machines while the rest of us live destitute makes no sense at all, economically speaking. If no-one can afford what the machines make then much of the economy would tick on as it currently does. > The reality is that many people’s lives have already been made materially better by this kind of industrialization and will continue to be. (Though of course it may well be the case that _income disparity_ may increase, particularly in low-tax countries). Your whole post is a just-so story. The crash of 2008 proves that the people at the top have no self-control where amassing wealth is concerned. And human history shows that the people at the top have no concern about the people at the bottom. These factors, combined with our computer-assisted ability to automate just about everything, points to a potentially dire outcome for practically all of us. It’s democratic socialism or death for us all, baby. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2013, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/105 "2013-07-11T16:04:46Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Your whole post is a just-so story. I disagree, I think it had plenty of tangible information including the cite showing that, despite a long-term trend of automation, long-term employment levels have remained the same. > [@](#): > > The crash of 2008 proves that the people at the top have no self-control where amassing wealth is concerned. And human history shows that the people at the top have no concern about the people at the bottom. These factors, combined with our computer-assisted ability to automate just about everything, points to a potentially dire outcome for practically all of us. It’s democratic socialism or death for us all, baby. I’m typing this right now from within China. The credit crunch may be all we can think about in the West, but a far more significant story has been an incredible rise out of poverty: the last 2 decades have seen more people pulled out of poverty than ever before, and China has been at the forefront of that. I’m old enough to remember a time when chinese manufacturing was only ever mentioned in pitying tones; that it was all about the west exploiting the east. Nobody talks like that now. And how did china do it? Largely by _retreating from_ socialism, and moving towards free-market principles, “baby”. The talk nowadays is of the chinese “stealing” western jobs, and “exploiting” Africa, all based on a similar ignorance of economics. There is no finite number of jobs in the world, nor finite amount of money. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2013, 10:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/106 "2013-07-12T10:00:59Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > I disagree, I think it had plenty of tangible information including the cite showing that, despite a long-term trend of automation, long-term employment levels have remained the same. UNemployment levels. People are kept out of those figures by other means. Ever more people go to university, and amass debt with not much to show for it. Ever more people go to prison. Every more people live on pensions and other hand-outs. All those people are unemployed, but they’re not “unemployed” and don’t show up as such on statistics. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2013, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/107 "2013-07-12T10:25:40Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > UNemployment levels. People are kept out of those figures by other means. Ever more people go to university, and amass debt with not much to show for it. Ever more people go to prison. Every more people live on pensions and other hand-outs. All those people are unemployed, but they’re not “unemployed” and don’t show up as such on statistics. Before I respond, I want to make sure we’re on the same page: Are you saying that; due largely to automation, real unemployment has increased significantly, but official figures hide this (deliberately or otherwise), by not including pensioners, students etc in the unemployment figures? And by “real” unemployment we mean people who want to work, but cannot get a job. Is that your position? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 12:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/108 "2014-03-20T12:16:29Z")
We’re getting closer: > **[With Google's Robot-Buying Binge, A Hat Tip To The Future](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/03/17/290888529/with-googles-robot-buying-binge-a-hat-tip-to-the-future)** > > The price and difficulty of building robots has fallen, and Google has scooped a half-dozen robotics firms. It's a safe bet that bots will be an increasing part of our workplaces and daily lives. And on the debate just upthread about whether “long term employment levels” have remained constant, a look at [this graph](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000) shows a clear downward trend over the past few years. Note too that most of that decline has taken place after the Great Recession was over, and during a period in which the [unemployment rate](http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet?request_action=wh&graph_name=LN_cpsbref3) has itself been falling. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/109 "2014-03-20T13:18:49Z")
Google is seeing the future, and that it is better to be the one who builds the robots rather than be the one who is displaced by the robots. Look, long term, robots may lead to a future in which human beings are freed from having to labor to earn a living, perhaps resulting in an explosion of creativity and human happiness. But I worry about the transitional phase, especially in a world where most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of powerful oligarchies that don’t give a shit about the rest of society. Only well-grounded social democracies are likely to make that transition with minimal human suffering. And “well-grounded social democracy” is NOT a term I would use to describe the U.S. right now. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/110 "2014-03-20T14:02:01Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Google is seeing the future, and that it is better to be the one who builds the robots rather than be the one who is displaced by the robots. Yet ultimately it should become relatively worthless to be the company that builds the robots as well. Being the 22nd century’s best quarterback, or winning the 137th season of The Voice, will likely be more lucrative (to the extent that wealth is important by then–which, as I said upthread, will mostly revolve around who gets to live in the best locations and eat at the best restaurants, get good seats for the hottest ticket on Broadway, etc.). > [@](#): > > Only well-grounded social democracies are likely to make that transition with minimal human suffering. And “well-grounded social democracy” is NOT a term I would use to describe the U.S. right now. Oh, I hear ya. That’s the basis of the uncertainty expressed in the last two paragraphs of my OP. But I am cautiously optimistic, as I think we are headed in the right direction politically. Gerrymandering and the tenacity of old white voters in off-year elections is keeping the Tea Party crowd in the mix for now. But they are so very much against the tide. Where is the wave of replacement voters ready to sweep in to buttress their movement twenty years from now? I don’t see Millennials and Latinos voting the Koch brothers’ way, no matter how much money they throw at the political system. There was a backlash against Great Society “welfare liberalism” in the '70s and '80s to be sure. But that was before there was sufficient automation to pad the safety net and really allow for an economic system in which a large percentage of the population can be out of the labour force without really impinging on the hard-working “silent majority”. There will of course continue to be people who will get hopping mad and insist that this is just what is happening; but as long as the overall standard of living keeps going up for the average person, those who wave their copies of _The Fountainhead_ and bellyache about “makers vs. takers” are not going to carry the day. And as the automation process continues apace, they will look sillier and sillier, until they sound first like gold bugs, then just come across as quaint curiosities like the Amish. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/111 "2014-03-20T16:02:31Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > And on the debate just upthread about whether “long term employment levels” have remained constant, a look at [this graph](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000) shows a clear downward trend over the past few years. Note too that most of that decline has taken place after the Great Recession was over, and during a period in which the [unemployment rate](http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet?request_action=wh&graph_name=LN_cpsbref3) has itself been falling. First of all this graph shows a small decline over a _much_ smaller timeframe than the graph I previously linked – an order of magnitude smaller. And in fact _I didn’t go back far enough_ as most estimates of US unemployment from 1850 to 1900 also show it bouncing around the 6% mark, like the 20th century. If automation puts people out of jobs, period, how could there have been such mechanization in that time, and no enduring change to unemployment levels? Secondly, on this distinction between unemployment and employment levels – the latter figure is much more misleading. Just because someone is in education does not mean they cannot get a job, for example. I myself, at the age of 30, used my own savings to study for a year and retrain in another industry, though I could have continued in my current job, which I hated. If increases in higher education is a smokescreen for increasing poverty levels then…we should also see stats of increasing poverty levels. We don’t. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2014, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/112 "2014-03-20T16:16:42Z")
I think we may be talking past each other here. I’m not saying, like the Luddites, “oh noes, all this mechanisation is destroying jobs and leaving the poor workers desperate to find jobs but unable to do so”. No no, not at all. I would fully expect that unemployment rate to stay pretty steady, even as the labour force participation rate continues to drop, down into the 50s, 40s, and who knows how far down. At the same time, the safety net will be increased, the overall wealth of society will rise, standards of living will go up even for all those people not in the workforce. IOW people will be perfectly content not to be in the labour force and will not tell government surveyers that they are “unemployed”, nor will they beat the pavement looking for work or send out their CVs. (I can imagine a lot of them doing some little craft or the occasional odd job to call themselves “self employed” for social reasons, without earning significant income from their “businesses”.) This state of affairs will cause a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of “bootstrap” conservatives, but everyone else will just go on with their lives and ignore them. BTW, if you look at statistics for \*male \*participation in the labour force, the trend is more stark as it is not hidden by the increase in female participation in the wake of the women’s movement. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2014, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/113 "2014-04-26T13:49:55Z")
In the past couple days I have come across two news stories that are uncannily resonant with this discussion. Someone in this thread posted a link to an online story or novel that was not terribly well written in a literary sense, but which had some very interesting futurism notions in it. The most innovative, and seemingly unique, element was that it predicted the “rise of the robots” would not initially happen with robots at all–but with software that would tell humans how to do their jobs down to a ultra-micromanaging level. This first story from NPR, about how UPS electronically monitors everything from the amount of distance a driver backs up, to how long it takes them to unlock a door, and a zillion other little elements of their work, is eerily reminiscent of that scenario: > **[To Increase Productivity, UPS Monitors Drivers' Every Move](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/04/17/303770907/to-increase-productivity-ups-monitors-drivers-every-move)** > > A typical UPS truck now has hundreds of sensors on it. That's changing the way UPS drivers work — and it foreshadows changes coming for workers throughout the economy. Another issue we have been discussing is what happens when things that were formerly scarce become essentially free, or at least very cheap and plentiful. [This New York Times piece](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/business/when-diamonds-are-dirt-cheap-will-they-still-dazzle.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=1) about the future of diamonds and Picasso paintings in an era of increasingly sophisticated 3-D printers comes to a similar conclusion as I have: that real estate in an attractive location will be the status symbols of the future, to a much greater extent even than now. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2014, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/114 "2014-04-26T15:31:52Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Let’s leave aside for the moment all the dystopian visions of doom from an automated future (The Machine Stops, The Terminator, The Matrix, etc.), not because they couldn’t happen but because I have another question in mind. > > When we look around us and see ATMs, Roombas, GPS operated farm combines, iPhone’s Siri, etc., it’s not so hard to imagine that if we were to jump forward a few more decades or a century, we could find ourselves in a time where the vast majority of drudge work (from janitorial services, to construction and agriculture, to cooking and waiting tables at a restaurant, to manufacturing everything including the manufacturing robots themselves) is done by “robots”. Not C-3PO or R2D2, but computer-guided machinery of one sort or another. Perhaps there will be a few humans needed to guide things (almost like George Jetson, pushing buttons), plus of course artistic and creative vocations like political punditry or ballet; but the stuff that maintains people’s basic Maslow hierarchy needs (shelter, food, etc.) will be taken care of without human labour, as will additional layers of luxury. > > Further, this level of automation should mean that no one is wretchedly poor, that everyone will be able to live in at least reasonable comfort without having to “work for a living”. Right? Again, maybe those who do “extra” could have additional reward for doing so, but if robots can do all the stuff I described, and assuming population is under reasonable control, no one should want for the basics. > > So here’s my question: what does the transition to this state of affairs look like? Before we get to the point where people say “duh, this is obviously stupid to make people work for paychecks and pay for everything”, it strikes me that capitalist tech entrepeneurs will try to enrich themselves by taking over sectors of the economy that used to require human labour. After all, when washers and dryers and dishwashers were invented, they weren’t just passed out to families with a benevolent wish that housewives liberate themselves from drudgery. They were (and are) sold at a profit, just like those automatic GPS-driven farm combines. > > So when the janitorial robots become cheaper than hiring people, janitors and hotel housekeepers will be thrown out of work. Same thing for taxi drivers when automated cars are perfected. And so on and so forth. At what point then, and in what way, does it cross a rubicon from creating mass unemployment (which is bad) to obviating the need for employment at drudgery (which is good)? Will the robot-making companies find themselves increasingly with fewer and fewer customers because no one will have a job? Will governments just take over, Tea Partiers be damned? Or will it somehow happen organically without great turmoil? I can see the end result, but that transition is a muddle. Whaddaya think? I haven’t read the entire thread, but the idea that robots will only take over menial jobs is a fallacy. Robots are becoming better and better at cognition, reading, comprehension, language, etc. Robots will be vastly superior to humans at skilled tasks like art, medicine, law, etc. in a few decades. There is pretty much nothing a human can do that a robot won’t be able to do better within our lifetime (or if not in that timeframe, probably within the century). That includes things like interpreting emotions, being a good listener, being a physician, creating art (or determining what art you’d enjoy) etc. Robots will not only be smarter than us, they will have better social and artistic skills. Bill Joy was right when he said the future doesn’t need us. [http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html) The idea of robots doing the menial work while we humans do the artistic, touchy feely and intellectual work is never going to happen. The robots will be vastly superior to those things too. The Watson machine from IBM is rapidly becoming an expert clinician. > **[IBM's Watson Supercomputer May Soon Be The Best Doctor In The World](https://www.businessinsider.com/ibms-watson-may-soon-be-the-best-doctor-in-the-world-2014-4)** > > Watson has analyzed 605,000 pieces of medical evidence, 2 million pages of text, and 25,000 training cases — far more than any med student could remember. As far as a post scarcity society, a major problem with that is that we may run out of natural resources before we can achieve that. That will take some adjusting to. There is also the fact that the robots will be earned by the capital class, and unless there is mass redistribution of wealth nobody will have the money (since jobs will be eliminated) to buy the products. Here is a book worth reading. > **[The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of...](https://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology/dp/1448659817)** > > The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future \[Ford, Martin\] on Amazon.com. \*FREE\* shipping on qualifying offers. The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the... It talks about a period of upset when mass unemployment and concentrated capital causes social unrest. He prescribes a mandatory wage redistribution for everyone. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2014, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/115 "2014-04-26T19:40:53Z")
I own and have read that book. I strongly suggest though that you read through the thread and then weigh in. There’s a lot of great stuff in those three pages. ---
**Author:** ![Kinthalis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kinthalis/32/16084_2.png) [@Kinthalis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kinthalis)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/116 "2014-04-28T20:16:38Z")
Could this be why no alien civilizations have stopped by to say hello? It’s not so much that the problem of interstellar travel is intractable, but rather that all other civilizations eventually become too fat and lazy to be arsed? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/117 "2014-04-28T20:25:25Z")
Ha, like in Wall-E? I like it. ---
**Author:** ![TheSeaOtter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ed655f/32.png) [@TheSeaOtter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheSeaOtter)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/118 "2014-04-28T21:19:11Z")
> [@Kinthalis](#): > > Could this be why no alien civilizations have stopped by to say hello? > > It’s not so much that the problem of interstellar travel is intractable, but rather that all other civilizations eventually become too fat and lazy to be arsed? I dunno, I think at the very least we’d set the robots to the task of exploring the universe, too. They’re actually much better suited to it than we are in some ways - they don’t mind G-forces, are less susceptible to radiation, don’t need food or air, and they don’t get bored during journeys between stars. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/119 "2014-07-13T01:31:31Z")
Today my wife called tech support because our Internet was acting up. Throughout the entire call, she never spoke to a live human, but she did interact with a kind of rudimentary AI, who was convincing enough that although my wife knew it was a computer (Turing test!), still referred to with third person female pronouns when describing it to me. This 'bot asked some questions (when my wife replied that yes, there were lights illuminated on the modem, the 'bot responded “Hmmm…” before going on to the next step), tested the connection, and gave directions to my wife on what steps to take. Then “she” tested the connection again, and found that “her” advice had worked, asked my wife if she needed help with anything else, and then wished her a nice day. Pretty much the same as tech support from that company has done in the past, except that those people are now out of a job. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2014, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/120 "2014-07-13T01:37:37Z")
They’re definitely getting better! I was fooled, just a couple days ago, by a cold caller who was a robot, not a man. He even engaged in the “Hello?” “Hello?” “Hello?” dance that happens these days with a poor initial connection. Finally he asked something cogent, like, “Are you interested in furthering your education.” I was silent for a while, trying to think of a polite way to say no, and he took my silence as definitive…and hung up. Artificial discourtesy! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914.md?page=7)